Kenneth S Rogoff
Number of games in database: 132
Years covered: 1968 to 2012
Last FIDE rating: 2505
Overall record: +38 -29 =64 (53.4%)*
* Overall winning percentage = (wins+draws/2) / total games
Based on games in the database; may be incomplete.
1 exhibition game, odds game, etc. is excluded from this statistic.

Kenneth Saul Rogoff learned chess from his father at age six, but only took up the game in earnest when he received a chess set for his 13th birthday. He was soon recognised as a chess prodigy. By age 14, he was a USCF master and New York State Open Champion, and shortly thereafter became a senior master, the highest US national title. At sixteen, Rogoff dropped out of high school to concentrate on chess, and spent the next several years living primarily in Europe and playing in tournaments there. When eighteen, he made the decision to go to college and pursue a career in economics rather than to become a professional player, although he continued to play and improve for several years afterward.

Rogoff was awarded the IM title in 1974 and the GM title in 1978. He came third in the World Junior Championship of 1971 and finished second in the US Championship of 1975, which doubled as a Zonal competition, one-half point behind Walter Shawn Browne; this result qualified him for the 1976 Interzonal at Biel, where he finished 13-15th. In other tournaments he finished equal first at Norristown 1973 and Orense 1976.

Early in his economics career, Rogoff served as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and also at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He is currently the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

galdur: Super Heated Jet Fuel and other fantastic magic out of Hollywood-Pentagon.

<Solomon: Yeah... 10 million people, I mean, some of them.. now, and it's interesting that you write in one of your chapters, I think it's Chapter 12, deals specifically with conspiracy theories. One of them, as you know - probably one of the most persistent - is that the buildings were brought down by controlled explosion, controlled demolition. One of the bits of evidence that is often cited is the collapse of World Trade Center Building Number 7, which was not hit by any plane. One question that people have is: why didn't the Commission deal with the collapse Building 7, which some call the smoking gun? Why did this collapse at all?

Hamilton: Well, of course, we did deal with it. The charge that dynamite, or whatever, brought down the World Trade Towers, we of course looked at very carefully - we find no evidence of that. We find all kinds of evidence that it was the airplanes that did it.

Don't take our word on that: the engineers and the architects have studied this thing in extraordinary detail, and they can tell you precisely what caused the collapse of those buildings. What caused the collapse of the buildings, to summarize it, was that the super-heated jet fuel melted the steel super-structure of these buildings and caused their collapse. There's a powerful lot of evidence to sustain that point of view, including the pictures of the airplanes flying into the building.

Now, with regard to Building 7, we believe that it was the aftershocks of these two huge buildings in the very near vicinity collapsing. And in the Building 7 case, we think that it was a case of flames setting off a fuel container, which started the fire in Building 7, and that was our theory on Building 7.

Now we're not the experts on this, we talked to the engineers and the architects about this at some length, and that's the conclusion we reached.

Solomon: Let me just ask you one more question on that. One counter-argument - or there's two, I guess - one is that that fire very rarely, and has never, forced buildings constructed like the World Trade Centers to ever collapse, because steel doesn't melt at temperatures that can be reached through a hydro-carbon fire, and that there's other.. in other words, there are countless cases of other buildings that have been on fire that have not collapsed.

Hamilton: - but not on fire through jet fuel, I don't think you have any evidence of that. But here again, I'm not the expert on it. We relied on the experts, and they're the engineers and the architects who examined this in very great detail.>

keypusher: <goldenbear: I don't want to get in to who was behind 9/11. I will only point out that it is obvious the buildings exploded, since if they had fallen due to impact, they would have fallen asymmetrically, toward the point of deformation.>

Arguments about 9/11 are idiotic even by internet standards, so I generally avoid them. But what on earth do you mean? Does anyone claim the buildings fell because of <impact>? If they had, they wouldn't have stood for an hour+ after the planes hit, right?

goldenbear: <keypusher> I mean if they fell due to fires caused by impact, they would have fallen asymmetrically, toward the point of deformation. You would think the fire started somewhere. The whole building would not have been engulfed simultaneously. If the building "pancaked" due to fire, that asymmetry would have been conserved and magnified on the way down.

keypusher: <goldenbear: <keypusher> I mean if they fell due to fires caused by impact, they would have fallen asymmetrically, toward the point of deformation. You would think the fire started somewhere. The whole building would not have been engulfed simultaneously. If the building "pancaked" due to fire, that asymmetry would have been conserved and magnified on the way down.>

Why? How?

And if the point of deformation is on the 100th floor of a 110-story building, then how is the building supposed to fall towards that point?

galdur: <keypusher> I think you need to read that remarkable 2006 transcript from a Canadian TV interview with Lee Hamilton, co-chairman of the 9/11 commission. The guy clearly doesnīt have a clue, LOL.

goldenbear: <keypusher> The first collapsing floor would hit steel columns of the second collapsing floor at a slight angle. The second collapsing floor's steel would bend before giving way and the angle would grow sharper, and so on.

galdur: The mass of structural steel increases the closer to the ground, for obvious reasons. Therefore, the mass of the top 10 of 110 is not 9% of that of the entire tower but more like 3%. The notion that this small mass would somehow stamp the rest into the ground at virtually free-fall speed - in a gravity driven event - frankly is physically impossible.

goldenbear: <keypusher><And if the point of deformation is on the 100th floor of a 110-story building, then how is the building supposed to fall towards that point?> So that it would bend away form deformation and being top-heavy, fall towards it.

goldenbear: <The mass of structural steel increases the closer to the ground, for obvious reasons. Therefore, the mass of the top 10 of 110 is not 9% of that of the entire tower but more like 3%. The notion that this small mass would somehow stamp the rest into the ground at virtually free-fall speed - in a gravity driven event - frankly is physically impossible.> I think that's true too, but being a layman, the simplest way for me grasp that the buldings exploded is to assume that there must have been at least a slight asymmetry originally and to reason that that would be conserved and magnified by the resistance on the way down.

patzer2: <Jim Bartle><Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but a great part of the defense budget is the cost of highly sophisticated weapon systems, new airplanes, missiles, ships, etc. Many of these have nothing to do with dealing with Islamic terrorism, or with today's world. They're based on the Cold War and dealing with the Soviet Union.>

You're behind the times. The primary emphasis of the US military shifted from cold war nuclear deterrence to a flexible response strategy, emphasizing conventional war capabilities, under President Kennedy in 1961.

The US Air Force stand down of the USAF Strategic Air Command, integrating its much smaller role into Tactical Air Command in 1992 after the end of the Soviet Union, further emphasized the declining role of nuclear deterrence.

The size of the US military is based on the threat assessment of the Joint Chiefs, and the response to that assessment by the President and Congress. Secretary of Defense Panetta, appointed by President Obama, indicates the cuts in defense legislated in Nov 2010 (calling for half the future budget cuts to occur in Defense) are too severe and will hurt military readiness and endanger our national security.

I agree with Secretary Panetta, who I am sure is looking at a threat assessment that is not based on a cold-war deterrence mission.

galdur: <goldenbear> When the tower collapses, static energy is transformed into kinetic energy. Itīs virtually zero-sum, a 150-ton plane and its fuel (most of which burns up in seconds) isnīt going to do very much to the 500-thousand ton tower in that regard.

So, you have the concept of an energy sink. It clearly doesnīt add up at all in the case of the WTC and therefore some external energy/explosives must have been used.

Every single one of the problems you have raised today have been thoroughly answered in the links I posted yesterday.

Thoroughly answered.

Yet you cannot answer ONE of the problems I posed for nonsense believers like you. Because you can't. Yet I have met your objections to the truth.

Explain WHY you refuse to look at the evidence which destroys your myths? The building did not fall at the speed of gravity. I have links which show DEBRIS falling next to the building, and outpacing it!! The building hist the ground seconds later.

Every one of your objections is based on lies.

Please explain why you persist in posting lies on this page?

Why?

What is your goal?

Are you really that stupid that you cannot understand how the links I posted have blown your theories sky-high? Every one of them?

Yet you persist. It is a sign of madness to close your eyes to the refutations of your silly arguments. Which are abundant, and based on VISUAL EVIDENCE.

Your facts are wrong. Your logic is worse. Quit spamming this stuff. Or argue against the visual evidence presented in my links which show the lies you believe for what they are.

You are the most inconsistent reasoner we have here. In one breath you try to destroy the 911 comission's report as fabricated, the next instant ist is the solid proof you need for some absurdity.

Have you ever seen an airplane crash? I have. They can fly at even faster speeds than 530 mph a few feet above the ground. Especially when in the next instant they HIT the ground! The plane that hit the Pentagon came in at an angle anyway. It's not hard to fly a plane at a 10 degree angle straight at something with engines at full thrust. What do you think will happen instead? The plane will not be able to touch down at that speed? What a ridiculous notion. They didn't put down the flaps and landing gear, which would have been torn off at that speed (if the automatic safety systems would even have allowed it).

You have picked out the most ridiculous objections that could be imagined. Are you saying the passengers and crew of that flight never existed? You are extremely off the deep end, my friend. Way off. Drowning in bad brain juice.

I've got an idea: Why not argue against man's ability to fly in airplanes? That seems impossible, doesn't it?

Or you could try answering my questions from two days ago. Never mind I wouldn't be able to shut up in response to the nonsense you would produce.

galdur: <stock puppet> Large wing airplanes such as the 757 canīt fly horizontally a few feet off the ground at 530 mph because of the ground effect. There is a reason why these things have to slow down for landing you know.

Those towers collapsed at virtually free-fall speed and even the 9/11 commission admits it. This is obviously a physical impossibility for a reinforced tower in a gravity driven event. Maybe you slept through Physics 103.

PinnedPiece: OK <galdur> you are not processing facts. You are asking for help to clear up your misunderstandings, then ignoring the help. No ground effect way involved---are you saying its not possible to dive a plane into a building at full speed?

Before you go any further, research some airplane crashes, for goodness sakes. Stop coming off as so utterly ignorant. I am embarrased for you.

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